Chapter Six
Eoin sat in his grandfather’s study surrounded by the late duke’s possessions.
Despite building a home in popular and modern Mayfair, His Grace had preferred the older, heavier Jacobean furnishings of a century before.
The massive oak desk sprawled like a dark, foreboding ancient altar in front of airy sash windows.
The bookshelves were enormous with thick carved columns, which served only to make the furniture feel more foreboding.
The dark wood contrasted sharply with the delicate white molding and the cheery, sky blue walls.
Yet this room perfectly embodied the old Foxglen, a man determined to drag musty traditions into a new, changing era.
Eoin had spent many an hour between these walls, scribbling away at a small desk tucked into the far-right corner. His grandfather had wanted to keep an eye on him while Eoin had read account books instead of fairy tales.
He’d hated this place, where the only sounds were his grandfather’s raspy breathing and the scratch of his quill against vellum. Yet this had been Eoin’s nursery, then his schoolroom, and finally his apprenticeship. And now it was allegedly his own study.
But it still felt like the former duke’s. Even the title rested unevenly on Eoin’s shoulders. He’d spent most of his life preparing for this role, but now that it was upon him, he didn’t know what to do with it.
A sudden loud rap at his door caused Eoin to start. On the floor beside him, the gosling stirred in the nest of blankets that Eoin had laid down, but the fowl did not fully awaken.
The servants, even his steward, would scratch quietly. But this. This was a bang to summon an entire Roman legion—a long dead one at that.
The insistent sound was the only warning Eoin had before Hannah popped inside.
She still wore a workingwoman’s drab linsey-woolsey, and her floppy mobcap hid most of her red curls.
Yet she still managed to appear like a whirl of color.
Perhaps it was the pink on her lightly freckled cheeks or the twinkling of her green eyes.
Or maybe it was simply that she always seemed to burst with life as if stone walls or perhaps even the sky itself could not contain her exuberance.
Hannah shut the door behind her and winked. And just like the first time she’d made that gesture in his direction, his heart clenched and then began to ricochet madly in his chest. Why did the mere sight of her make him feel like an adventure was about to unfold?
Hannah did not appear at all intimidated by the looming pieces of furniture.
With nary a sidelong glance at her surroundings, she walked boldly to the high-backed chair on the other side of the old duke’s desk.
Before Eoin could offer her a seat, she’d already plunked down.
During the few occasions that Eoin had been instructed to sit rather than stand at attention while listening to his grandfather, he had found the dratted contraption exceedingly uncomfortable.
Yet somehow Hannah not only managed to sprawl against the unforgiving oak frame but also appeared relaxed.
The former duke would have been horrified. But Eoin was impressed.
“I’ve already learned several things about your mother.” Hannah clearly did not abide by any form of ceremony as she immediately charged ahead without a single nicety. “First, I do not look like her. Rather, you do.”
To Eoin’s surprise, he felt his lips twitch, and a rare amusement bubbled up inside him. “Which is a relief since I am her son.”
“So bowing to Pan wasn’t an aberration.”
“Pardon?” Eoin asked in utter confusion.
“When we met on the road to London, you acted like a courtier greeting the king when I introduced you to my parrot,” Hannah breezily explained her non sequitur.
“I thought you must be a man of humor, but you’ve otherwise proved to be exceedingly stiff.
Clearly, though, you are capable of a quick rejoinder. ”
Was he a man of humor? Eoin really didn’t know, but the idea suddenly appealed to him. Although he enjoyed reading the ribald satires by Willoughby Wright, he’d never considered that he, himself, could possess even a modicum of wit.
“Upon a more serious note, I learned that you share your coloring and size with your mother, and that she was Irish.” Hannah ticked off each attribute on her fingers.
“Thank you,” Eoin said, even though he’d either known or surmised all that.
“I suppose none of that is new information, but did you know that she was a tavern maid at the Horse and Hen in Covent Garden?”
Hannah’s single question caused a rush of tangled emotions to barrel through Eoin.
He almost clenched his fists at the onslaught.
But Eoin was too well schooled to even twitch a muscle.
Instead, he sat stiffly in his chair as he tried to absorb the news that they had not just another clue but a concrete lead.
Yes, his mother and his sister had probably long moved away from the tavern, but it was an actual physical place instead of the vague, mostly forgotten memories of a six-year-old. For the first time since early childhood, hope flickered that he might actually see his loved ones again.
“It shouldn’t take too long to discover more.
I’ve already asked your butler to send a message round to Sophia.
She’ll send out one of our boys, and we should have an answer by late afternoon,” Hannah said.
“If you wish, the two of us can head to the Horse and Hen tonight—if it still exists—or we can visit whatever establishment took its place.”
Eoin wanted to say yes, but he stole a reluctant look at the pile of ledgers sitting on his ink blotter. “I am afraid I have accounts to review. I cannot let my work suffer for a personal quest. Too many rely on His Grace’s—I mean my—estates.”
Hannah tilted her head. “Don’t you have a steward or two who can help you with such matters?”
“I do,” Eoin admitted, but they were all dour men whom he’d inherited from his grandfather.
“Then why aren’t they assisting you? Do you mistrust their loyalty? Are they embezzling?”
Eoin stopped a sigh as he ran one finger over the leather binding of the top record. “I am afraid it is too much devotion, at least to my grandfather and his ways.”
“Do you plan to run your holdings differently than he did?” Hannah was no longer slouching but leaning forward, her eyes the exact color of dew-kissed grass in the spring.
Eoin paused. He never shared his inner thoughts, and doing so felt odd—like he was trying to stretch a weak and underutilized muscle. “I—I believe so.”
“You don’t sound very confident.” Hannah threw down her words like a gauntlet of old, but Eoin didn’t want to spar. He desired a confidante, someone he’d never had even for trivial matters.
“I am indeed uncertain,” Eoin admitted, even as he warned himself not to share too much.
But he couldn’t help it, not when Hannah was asking the perfect questions, echoing the thoughts that had been ripping through him since his grandfather’s death.
“I know what kind of duke my grandfather wanted me to be—he spent my lifetime making sure of it.”
“But you don’t want to be his version of a peer?” Hannah asked slowly, as if he were a particularly dense text that she was attempting to decipher.
“No,” Eoin said, and an emotion akin to relief flooded him. It was freeing to admit that aloud, to confess that all his grandfather’s efforts had failed.
“What kind of nob do you want to be?” Hannah asked in a straightforward way that should have grated. Instead, he welcomed the question.
“One that makes improvements to his lands,” Eoin answered promptly because he knew at least that.
“My grandfather resisted implementing the four-crop rotation system. He thought that turnips were unpleasant peasant food, and he didn’t want them growing on his property.
I’m considering replacing wheeled plows with newer, lighter ones.
I’ve also been wondering if a short canal would improve transport.
The Sankey Canal is a fascinating marvel, and I’m closely following the proposed Bridgewater Canal.
There’s also a possibility of hiring an expert to determine if there are any useful mineral deposits. And…”
Eoin trailed off as he realized that he’d started to babble.
He didn’t recall ever speaking so much at one time.
His grandfather would have rebuked him after the second sentence.
But these ideas… they’d been simmering in his mind for years.
He’d never allowed them to boil over, yet now they seemed to spew from him.
“Are you going through the ledgers to see what you can invest?” Hannah asked, her gaze penetrating.
“Um, yes,” Eoin admitted, slightly taken aback by how quickly Hannah had assessed the situation, but he supposed that she successfully ran her own business.
“You aren’t the duke that I thought you’d be,” Hannah told him, her expression hard to read but most definitely intense.
Her statement, though, bothered him. It almost sounded as if she knew him better than the circumstances warranted. But his thoughts immediately slammed to a stop when she smiled broadly.
“And I believe I like the difference.”
Incendiary heat burst through Eoin, and this time he did ball his hands into fists.
It was either that or gulp like a landed fish.
He should be wary of how easily this woman could turn him into an inferno, but instead he yearned to see what would happen if she continued to break through his legendary control.
“That is kind of you to say.” Eoin’s voice sounded strained to his own ears.
Hannah laughed, the sound rich and throaty. It seemed to rumble through Eoin until his body resonated with her mirth.
“You say the most perfunctory statements in the most unexpectedly charming manner.”